Canaries

Emma

After Gibraltar the same kind of social scene continued on in Graciosa, our first stop in the Canaries. We spent about ten days there, and Bronwen, Douglas and I spent the afternoons of most days on the beach with Alan and Janelle on Nanamuk, Nat on Windflower (see the "Friends" page)  and Rachel and Peter on Nevara——the last two younger kids, nine and seven, that joined us in our games on the beach, which were mainly Sharks and Minnows, which we played until dark most days—we usually went home at dark, and the few times when we played on afterward one or another of us got hurt running into someone else. It was a pretty great beach, and we spent two days amusing ourselves hauling wood from another beach (about an hour's walk away over scrubby bushes and sand) back to our beach for fires on three nights straight of beach potlucks.

We collected a large pile of wood--which turned out to be barely enough—and Nat found a sort of makeshift sled thing, two perpendicular sets of three planks, on which we piled the wood and dragged by a piece of rope that Douglas found (tied to a wooden pole that Alan found, and all of which all but the finders were extremely skeptical about the usefulness of). The older of us (Nat, Alan, Bronwen, and Douglas or Janelle) dragged it a little less than halfway that day, and next day we came back with better rope, a big old steel pole of ours, and a lot more food and water, and had quite an enjoyable time, all of us lining up and dragging it.

The wood was put to good use in consecutive bonfires for Halloween, Alan's fourteenth birthday, and someone else's birthday. For Alan's birthday everyone in the anchorage got together some kind of present and he opened them by light of bonfire, which was interesting and very smoky for onlookers.

Our Halloween was more festive and traditional than any we've had before on this trip; all the kids in the anchorage dressed up (which was of course a block that took considerable creativity to get over) and went around in dinghies from boat to boat. All of the boats were very friendly, and almost all of them were American, so we got a goodly haul. A man from some European country (that sounds politically illiterate but it's all I can remember) announced on Alan's birthday that he didn't like the concept of Halloween and kids shouldn't stop by at his boat because they wouldn't get anything (and, presumably, he might hit us over the heads with a rubber mallet). On Halloween, however, they beckoned us over and gave us bracelets instead of candy, which we were all wearing the next day.

We didn't go to the birthday potluck the next day, being thoroughly exhausted, and the day after both Nanamuk and Windflower left. Shortly after that we continued on to our next anchorage in the Canaries, Arguinguin.

We continued by ourselves, without any friends whatever, until Santa Cruz, where we made an acquaintance of a thirteen-year-old girl, Jayne, on the boat A Bientot. We spent a few afternoons with her, playing cards and talking, but after that we went without friends until the Caribbean.